


That creaking you hear in my bones

by Jack Ironsides (JackIronsides)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, Canon Compliant, Disabled Author, Disabled Character, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Internalised ableism, Jonathan Sims Needs a Hug, Major Character Injury, Martin Blackwood's Gold-Medal Pining for Britain, Missing Scene, Peter Lukas Doesn't Understand 'Money' or 'Personal Boundaries', Pre-Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims - Freeform, Season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:54:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23613346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackIronsides/pseuds/Jack%20Ironsides
Summary: In the aftermath of his meeting with Jude Perry, Jon has to adjust to the new limitations of his body. He gets a little help.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood & Jonathan Sims, pre-slash Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 32
Kudos: 317





	That creaking you hear in my bones

_All it took to unearth in the dust and the dirt_  
_Some release or respite from the heat and the hurt_  
_Was taking some time now and then to ask how I am_

*

When Jon goes back to work after the attack, he uses a cane. His leg doesn’t work like it did before. Apparently impromptu surgery in one’s workplace isn’t the safest practice. Between the ‘tissue damage’ and the infection, he hasn’t had the best time of it. There’ll probably be a new policy added the next time Elias updates the staff handbook. _Only impromptu surgery made with utility knives carefully sterilised in the approved method using the approved supplies, and performed by staff who have attended the required staff training will be permitted_.

The problem, he realises quickly, with working in a beautiful Gothic Revival building as he does, is that there are a lot of stairs. Especially if you work in the Archives, which are down in the basement. He’s bringing his lunch a lot more these days. Sometimes he forgets and has to ask one of the others to pick a sandwich up from Pret. If it’s a bad day and he’s tired, he just can’t face both the stairs and the subsequent walk to a cafe.

He does his leg exercises when he remembers, and when the phone alarms work to remind him. He knows he should be better, but he tries, and puts a post-it on his monitor and sometimes that helps.

He is careful to use the cane precisely as the physio tells him, with the handle at roughly hip height on the opposite side to his bad leg. The cane tipped out at the precisely correct angle, handle held firmly just so in his right hand.

Until Jude Perry.

(He lied at the hospital. He said his bad leg had given way when he was cooking dinner, and there had been an accident with the oil pouring directly onto the flame. He had planned the whole story out on the trip there, with his hand loosely draped in a hankie that he poured water on to try to keep it cool. He’s still a little proud of the story. God knows he couldn't tell the _truth_.)

Now his right hand is permanently a little curled up, but it also doesn’t fully close to grip properly (yet? maybe if he’s diligent with his new exercises), so he has to switch hands for using his cane. Especially since it took a long time before he could get close to _touching_ the palm of that hand, let alone weight bear on it.

He keeps using the cane, but it’s kind of a pain now. He only has one good hand, which means that if he uses his cane to get around, he has to put it down or lean it somewhere in order to be able to make a cup of tea, or open a door, or pick something up. Carrying a full mug of tea is such a _hassle_. If he wants to use his cane, then he has to carry the mug by kind of pressing it into his chest with the wrist of his bad arm, and if he’s filled it too full or isn’t quite careful in carrying it, he spills scalding hot milky tea all over his shirt, _and_ over the bare skin of his wrist if he’s unlucky, and then he has to cool his wrist and go and change his shirt, which is its own separate frustration. He wears a lot of rugby shirts now. Just ones with stripes, not supporting a team. They’re not as good as proper shirts, but they have the pleasing feeling of a soft collar on the back of his neck, but no buttons worth mentioning. Buttons are very difficult since—since Jude Perry.

But if he leans his cane up against the kitchen bench, or against the wall, so he can use his good hand, it always falls over almost immediately. At first he assumes he’s balanced it badly. Then he assumes that The Admiral must’ve brushed past it on his own inscrutable business. But soon he realises that actually canes just have a perpetual and passionate love affair with the floor, and they wish to consummate it as quickly and as frequently as possible. It’s easier to just go without his stick, honestly, but unfortunately he needs it more often than he doesn't. And on those bad days, even just limping from his room to the kitchen to the couch without his stick feels beyond him, and he finds himself avoiding getting up at all rather than limp a few metres. And sitting for too long in one place only makes his leg worse.

He has an old tennis ball he found in a local park that he squeezes while he’s reading statements sometimes. It helps, like the physio said it might, but his hand is still so weak, and sometimes he leaves it untouched on the desk for a while, because he gets _so frustrated_ with himself.

He’s been staying with Georgie for nearly three months now. She comes home one day in early May with a small plastic carrier bag. 

‘Here,’ she says. ‘I even paid the 5p for the bag, so you have to appreciate it.’

He opens the bag, and finds a small soft toy, about the size of the palm of his hand. It’s a frog, with black plastic beads for eyes, made out of bright fabric. He can feel from the weight that it’s filled with sand. 

‘Thank you…?’ he says uncertainly.

‘I saw it in a charity shop,’ she says. ‘I thought it might cheer you up. Give you a change from the ball sometimes when you want to practise your hand exercises. Or you could just put it by your laptop, and imagine it’s cheering you on.’

She grins, cheeks dimpling. He feels a rush of affection for her. It’s a peace offering, of sorts.

‘Thank you,’ he says, deliberately over-serious to make her laugh. ‘I’ll treasure it always.’

*

His cane isn’t anywhere in sight when he wakes up in the wax museum. He doesn't know if they confiscated it in case he used it to defend himself with, or if they just left it behind when they kidnapped him. It all comes to the same thing in the end: it’s gone now. 

Once he realises he’s not going to die, he’s sad it’s gone. He misses the little sticker of an eye that Tim stuck on the end of the wooden handle (‘So you can always keep your spooky eye on us, boss’), but it’s not like the thing isn’t replaceable. He might just have to limp for a while. It’ll make taking the Tube extra awful, but it’ll only be for a week or two. Probably. He should be able to get to the shops soon. He’s still going to _get_ a soon, which is nice.

The Distortion – Helen – _The Distortion_ brings him back to London, and he unlocks his flat. People, presumably the police, have clearly been here, gone through all his stuff, but he’s too tired to care. His whole flat smells stale and wrong. In the morning he’ll have to open the windows, but for now he’s going to crash on his very own bed, for all that the sheets smell weird. There are a few spiderwebs in the corners of the rooms, but he thinks they’re probably normal spiders, not, ahaha, ‘spooky spiders’. He struggles out of his shirt – it’s always harder when he’s tired, and being tied up for so long means his fingers are even more useless than normal. He wrenches at it, and he hears a small ripping sound, and one of the buttons is hanging a little more loosely than before. It hasn’t torn through, however, and the button’s still attached, so it’s probably fine for now. He trips on something and stubs his stockinged feet. After a brief, impassioned _FUCK_ , he looks down and realises what he’s tripped on. He digs out one of the forearm crutches that he’d shoved under the bed to get out something that had rolled underneath it. It’s one of the ugly metal and grey plastic NHS crutches that he was given when he was released from hospital. He’d meant to return them to the Trust when he bought the cane, but hadn’t got around to it. Which is handy for now, at least.

The forearm crutch turns out to be a little better than the cane had been. He could let go of it and let it dangle from his arm by the cuff while he reaches for a mug or opens a door. It’s awkward, and the dangling crutch tends to bang into things, but it’s better than nothing. And it’s much less irritating than having to bend over for the fourteenth time that day to retrieve a fallen cane. Especially on bad days when the muscles of his leg seize up, and it’s painful to put much weight through it at all. 

He’s getting better at using it, too. He’s glad he doesn’t have to try to navigate the Tube or the stairs down to the Archives without it, even if it’s still a pain to have to stand mostly on one leg so he can use his good hand to wrench open the Archives’ doors – all of which are fire doors, for safety purposes – and then he has to hold the door open by leaning into it with his right shoulder while he manoeuvres the crutch back into place so he can walk through. It’s taken some finesse to get there, but he has it down to an art now.

He’s doing—well, he’s not actually doing _well_ , but he’s doing better than could be expected. He’ll get through this. He’s doing—fine. He’s doing fine.

*

Now that Jon’s back in the Archives, Martin can’t help but notice that Jon’s worse off than he was in the first month after The Attack. He has a crutch now, not a cane, as he did before. And he’s using it on the wrong side, so his limp is even more pronounced that it was before. He keeps rubbing at his shoulder when he gets in and sits down in the morning. And if he’s standing talking to you, he’ll do this thing where he’ll sort-of lean on the crutch with his forearm the best he can, and he presses his bad hand into the red stripe across his good hand, like he’s trying to press out the pain. He doesn’t even seem to realise he’s doing it. It’s just become a habit, the way he used to fiddle with his cuffs or take off his glasses, clean them, and put them back on.

He’s also really struggling with a lot of things, since he has to use his good hand with his crutch. And because he’s _Jon_ , he’s even pricklier about help than he was before. Martin watched him awkwardly carry a cup of tea from the kitchen precisely once before he decided he never wanted to watch Jon struggle needlessly again. Not when Martin has two working hands. 

Fetching tea seems to be something he can get away with, possibly because he used to occasionally offer before. So he’s ramped up his tea runs, and Jon’s distracted enough that he hasn’t seemed to notice that he never has to get up for tea anymore. It’s good, and the tired smiles he gives Martin sometimes when he takes the cup are also good, in a way that Martin is going to fold away in his chest to save for later. It's good, but he wishes he could do more. Actually help Jon properly.

So Martin asks Jon about it, as lightly and as in passing as he can manage. Then he does some research, because there’s _got_ to be a better option. He finds a different type of forearm crutch, which can be adjusted. It has a plastic cradle for your forearm, which you can tilt it so the weight goes through your arm and not your hand, and there are straps you can use to secure it to your arm, so it won’t matter that Jon’s hand won’t curl properly around the handgrip.

Only they’re kind of expensive, even if you only get one, and you can’t get them through the NHS. So he organises a whip-round. Tim puts in, even though he’s snarky about it, and Sasha does too, although she has a kind of amused expression that Martin doesn’t really want to think about.

Jon isn’t well connected through the rest of the Institute, but Martin _is_. He knows almost everyone by sight at _least_ , and he’s had plenty of tearoom chats with most people. He remembers that Inga has just got a little terrier (she showed him pictures), and that Marie got back from maternity leave last month (she had a boy; the first in her kid’s generation because all her sisters had girls), and that Graeme has just got back to work after breaking his arm in a lacrosse game. And Martin always puts a pound or two in whatever envelope’s going around, and he writes tiny neat messages in whichever card is in there (and often puts a little heart after his name, which the girls in Artefacts think is incredibly adorable of him).

So when Martin takes the yellow envelope to Artefact Storage, because Grace in Artefacts and Jon used to be sort-of friendly when they were both in Research, he assumes it’s going to come back to him by the afternoon.

It doesn’t. The yellow envelope has _RETURN TO MARTIN BLACKWOOD IN ARCHIVES_ printed on the top in neat, careful capitals, and the envelope gets passed around. It goes around Artefact Storage, and Rachel takes it to Research, and it gets passed around there. Martin left a small GET WELL SOON card in the envelope, mostly as a joke. It has a cartoon hippopotamus on the front holding a comically small bouquet of flowers, and he assumed that it would just be the three of them, and perhaps Elias, who would sign it. The card soon fills up. Mostly with generic I-don’t-really-know-you well wishes, but there are a few people who worked with Jon in Research who write messages too. Someone has even cut up a sheet of printer paper and slipped in a folded sheet as well, to fit the rest of the messages, like a little booklet of good will.

When Martin gets the email that the envelope is currently on Rami’s desk over in Research, he’s a little surprised. And when he picks it up, he’s very pleased by the weight of the collection of one- and two-pound coins. There’s even a few fivers and a tenner in there. There’s almost certainly _nearly_ enough to get the crutch, which is a relief.

He has to walk nearly straight past Elias’s desk to get back to the Archives, so he figures he might as well drop the envelope by him. As he gets to Elias’s office, though, there’s a cheerful-looking older man with a greying beard coming out, who puts out a hand to stop him, before closing the door.

‘I wouldn’t go in there right now,’ he smiles. ‘He’s in a bit of a mood! What’s this all about?’

He takes the envelope from Martin’s unresisting hands.

‘Birthday or leaving?’ he says, peering in.

‘Uh, neither,’ says Martin. ‘Jon needs a new crutch.’

‘That’s thoughtful of you,’ says the man. His tone is cheerful, but his blue-grey eyes seem to pierce right through him. Martin feels oddly exposed.

‘Oh. I, uh—’ Does he deny it? Does he pretend that he’s just carrying the envelope, that Tim arranged it?

‘Well, it’s a good cause,’ says the cheerful man.

He tucks the envelope under one arm and pulls out his wallet from an inside pocket of his blazer. He drops a _fifty-pound note_ into the envelope and offers it back to Martin.

‘Is that enough?’ he says, frowning a little, when Martin is too surprised to move.

‘Oh! Yes. Yes, that should be fine,’ he says, taking the envelope. ‘Uh. Thank you.’

‘Don’t mention it!’ smiles the cheerful man. ‘Let’s leave Elias to have his little sulk. See you later, Martin.’

His hand lands on Martin’s shoulder for a second before he passes him and disappears down the corridor. For that moment, he feels an odd chill spread from that brief contact, as though the cheerful man had just come in from a bitter winter’s day. Except it’s June. It’s not that cold outside.

He’s so discombobulated from the shoulder touch and the fact that the guy has just casually dropped _fifty quid_ into the whip-round envelope that it takes him a moment to realise what he’d _said_.

‘Hey, how did you know my n—’ he begins, turning, but the cheerful man is gone.

When the crutch arrives, Martin wraps it up in paper decorated with pictures of dogs. He gets a thick gel cushion for the handgrip so Jon's bad hand will curl around it better, and some Bio Oil that he finds in Boots that’s supposed to help with scars, and wraps those up too. They give it to Jon at a morning tea with cake and biscuits – there was plenty of money in the envelope, in the end. Jon is all embarrassed and thankful, and he keeps saying, ‘You didn’t have to do this,’ until Tim loses his temper and says, ‘Of course we did. Don’t be stupid.’

The rest of the Institute soon finds out there’s cake in the Archives, so for the rest of the day, people filter in to say hello, and wish Jon well, and take a piece of cake or a couple of biscuits back to their desks. The millionaire’s shortbread is all gone by 11am (except for the piece Martin wrapped in a serviette and put aside in his desk drawer for afternoon tea). Jon is fairly polite, by his standards, but he’s not terribly good at People, especially this many. So when Jon starts to look uncomfortable, Martin starts making small talk with the visitor about the first floor printer that never works, or offers to make a cup of tea (he’s just going to the kitchen anyway!). Or nudges Tim to go and be his charismatic self, since he’s still friends with half of Research.

Later, he sees Jon sneaking glances at his new crutch and smiling a tiny private smile, and it’s all worth it. It’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from ‘Battle Cries’ by The Amazing Devil, as is the initial piece of verse, because I can’t help myself.
> 
> The crutch that Martin buys for Jon exists; the one I found originally when I was looking for one for myself was called smartCRUTCH (stylised just like that), although there’s now an American company making similar-looking things at mobilitydesigned.com.
> 
> [A much shorter version of this story was originally posted to my tumblr here](https://jackironsides.tumblr.com/post/615089865077506048/gerrydelano-archivistbottles-thinking-about) in reaction to some amazing meta by archivistbottles and gerrydelano (at the same link) exploring Jon’s injured hand after his meeting with Jude Perry. I was originally just going to tidy up the initial paragraph before posting it here, but instead, I wrote almost all of the first section with Jon’s perspective.
> 
> A thousand thanks to [ruffboi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruffboi/pseuds/ruffboi) for reading this over, for sympathising when I lost the entire first draft to an iPad shutdown, encouraging me to rewrite it, and cheering me on to get the final version written. ilu <3


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